Thirteen Moons
by animagus1369
Summary: Alone, struggling with Sirius' death, Remus Lupin searches for a way to survive and to help Harry
1. prologue

** Thirteen Moons   
prologue**

* * *

I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena,  


the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf."  


George Chapman (1559-1634)  


* * *

A task so simple, so familiar. Pick up a quill. Dip it in ink. Press it to parchment. Begin to write. Today, that task is so hopelessly complicated. So impossibly huge. It has taken me the better part of a half-hour to manage it.  
  
Now that I have quill in hand, I have no idea what to write.  
  
I have spent countless hours with quill in hand, gripped in ink-stained fingers. Quill and parchment are familiar friends. Friends with whom I could explore emotions I could never express elsewhere. Emotions that I vented with impossible freedom, through the simple act of writing.  
  
Scratch of quill on parchment.  
  
Liquid slide of ink.  
  
Sounds and smells that soothe away troubled thoughts. That let me leave myself behind, that let me slip loose of my moorings. That let me break free of limitations, that lift obstacles out of my way. That create a world of emotion, of rage and affection and grief and laughter, in which my daytime, earthbound self could never survive.  
  
Once, writing was release of inhibitions. It was fulfillment.  
  
It was like sex, in a very real sense—the deepest reaches of my soul were close enough to caress, the whole of my mind and heart aching to be touched. The dizzy soaring freedom of it, climbing ever higher, fearless, windborne. The sense of plumbing depths I could never reach any other way, of sinking deep and flying high, of total immersion.  
  
Of release, profound and exhilarating.  
  
Yet now, in the space of a few hours, release has become imprisonment. Thoughts that once flew have come crashing to the ground, spiraling down into grave-dark earth. Emotions I never before feared to face—at least not on parchment, not when put down with quill and ink—struggle for release.  
  
Struggle against my inability to face them.  
  
Struggle against the memory of things written that should have been said. Of feelings admitted to in secrecy that should have been shared.  
  
Darkness, closing in, has changed my silent little world.  
  
The familiar has become alien.  
  
I stare at the quill in my hand. I no longer recognise it.  
  
Whatever magic it once held, whatever bond I had with it, has disappeared.  
  
There is nothing I want less than to press it to the page, to begin to write.  
  
I do not want to remember.  
  
I do not have a choice.  
  
Never in my life have I faced such a difficult crossroads, certainly not with the knowledge I now hold in my heart, like the seed of some sinister weed primed to sprout. Ready to grow like some maniacal creeping horror, ready to obscure whatever humanity remains in me.  
  
He is gone.  
  
I am left with a choice that is no choice. I can face what has happened and go on. Or I can wallow in revenge, sinking deep, held fast by the darkness swirling inside my heart.  
  
Revenge has never seemed so tempting.  
  
But then, I have never had my heart ripped out by the roots, dangling useless and black like a rotten, horrible mockery of the original.  
  
I have never truly understood the meaning of hate.  
  
So easy to embrace.  
  
So tempting.  
  
So wrong.  
  
If I dip quill in ink bottle, if I put point to parchment, I will have no choice but to face yet another battle.  
  
I don't know if I am ready for this fight, so close on the heels of one that cost me so dearly. I don't know if I can win this battle.  
  
I don't know if I want to.  
  
But there is Harry.  
  
If I am hurting, he is in agony. If I doubt my ability to fight another battle, he doubts his ability to win the coming war.  
  
He needs me, though to me it seems arrogant to say it.  
  
I'm not used to being needed.  
  
Not by anyone but Sirius.  
  
Sirius needed me not for what I could give him—that was precious little, though it shames me to say it—but for myself.  
  
For Moony.  
  
Moony was all I could give him, a mass of contradictions and insecurities and troubles surrounded by walls a mile high. Walls he had to break through time after time.  
  
He never stopped breaking through those walls. Never stopped needing to see Moony behind them.  
  
And now there is no one to tear down the walls.  
  
No one but me.  
  
I don't know if I'm strong enough to do it.  
  
Still, I'm fooling myself if I believe for even a moment that I don't have to try.  
  
There is Harry to think about.  
  
Harry. Son of two of my best friends, now gone. Godson to another of my best friends, now gone.  
  
He is alone now, deeply and painfully alone.  
  
We have that as common ground, I suppose.  
  
We also have revenge. Or, rather, the desire for it, the violent, pounding need to make someone pay for the losses we have suffered.  
  
And we have guilt, dragging like ballast, threatening to force us beneath the surface, promising a slow, agonising trip to the bottom.  
  
I saw it all in his eyes before he was sent away.  
  
I recognised it, because I have seen it all in my own eyes, in the lightless surging depths of my heart.  
  
Harry can't afford those feelings, target that he is. But he might not be able to fight them. Not if he is alone.  
  
To help Harry, I have to fight my own private battle with darkness.  
  
For Harry, I have to succeed.  
  
My only hope—our only hope—is for me to examine it all, to try and make some sense of the memories crashing against the sharp jagged black rock that is my soul.  
  
To finally understand.  
  
To overcome.  
  
I hope I am strong enough to begin it, and having begun, to finish.  
  
To win.  
  
Tomorrow morning, the fight begins.  
  
--Remus J. Lupin. June, 1996.

* * *


	2. chapter 01: the first full moon that mat

** THIRTEEN MOONS   
chapter 01: the first full moon that mattered**  
  


* * *

What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade  
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?  
_To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. Line 1_.  
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

* * *

  
The darkness inside me is a complex thing, alive and aware. There are times when it chooses to stay deep beneath the surface, times when I nearly forget that it is there. And there are times, thankfully rare, when it erupts, dark and hot and lethal, so powerful that I forget that I am here.  
  
Whether the darkness is at bay or whether it is raging, it is always there, drawing from parts of me I would rather ignore. It is a Gordian knot of pain and anger, frustration and jealousy, fear and insecurity, of loss.  
  
Sirius' death has set the darkness to raging. It is closer to the surface now than at any time outside the full moon. Its siren song is intense and constant, a horrible-beautiful wail too dangerous to heed. Too tempting to ignore.  
  
How best to master the darkness, to get past loss and grief and pain, to gain a toehold and start climbing out of the pit? To discover a way to achieve some sort of control?  
  
Control. For almost as long as I can remember, control has been the goal I've sought. Control over my feelings. Control over my environment.  
  
Control over my disease.  
  
My mother blamed it on what she called 'the accident.' She might have been right. She was a Muggle, and hadn't lost touch with her world when she made the choice to live in my father's and mine. And in the years immediately following 'the accident,' she spent a great deal of time poring over Muggle books trying to learn something—anything—to help me cope.  
  
Well, I'm here, and reasonably well-adjusted most of the time. I suppose that whatever she did worked fairly well.  
  
She might have been right about why control is so important to me as well. It might be compensation for my lack of control over my illness.  
  
It doesn't matter in the end. As she always told me, half-teasing, I can't control everything.  
  
Sirius' death proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt.  
  
Sometimes I really miss her.  
  
Sometimes it's damnably difficult, not being able to talk to her. But after what they did to her, I'm glad she's at rest.  
  
No one should have to live like that.  
  
Still, losing Sirius has me wishing for my mother again, like a child lost in the dark.  
  
Lost in the dark.  
  
Apt comparison, that.  
  
The darkness came to me when I was four.  
  
It has never left.  
  
It's strange, but when I try to remember the night the darkness came to me, it all seems dream-like, a story someone told me that I can only remember vaguely. A story that happened to someone else.  
  
It's in dreams that I truly remember it. Vivid dreams, painted darkly in terror and blood. In madness.  
  
I dreamt of it last night, for the first time in years.  
  
I'm not fool enough to deny that Sirius' death has me tied in knots. That I felt the darkness rise up immediately on seeing it happen, tearing at what little control I could grasp.  
  
I'm not fool enough to deny that the darkness powers the nightmare.  
  
But I am fool enough to relive it, and to grieve for the boy I was. That naïve, innocent boy who thought the world was his playground and he would live happily ever after.  
  
Sometimes, when I can feel the darkness taking hold, I wish that little boy dead of his long-ago wounds.  
  
Dead before he learned that life was anything but a parade of sweetness and light.  
  
Dead before he ever thought to sneak outside to play in the light of the full moon.  
  


  


  
_He waited until they were both asleep. He knew they were asleep, because he could hear his father's deep snore, and his mother's quiet breathing. This was going to be the best joke ever, he thought, and barely managed to stifle the giggles that threatened.  
  
He went down the stairs slowly and quietly, because if he hurried he might forget which stairs creaked or which ones were a little crooked. He didn't want to fall, because that would wake them both up. That would be bad, because he wouldn't get to play his joke.  
  
At the bottom of the stairs, he nearly tripped over his mother's slippers—the ones with the funny rabbit ears on them, that he loved to play with while she made breakfast. He had to be more careful. He crept, with a four-year old's stealth, down the corridor, across the kitchen, and over to the door.  
  
He paused at the doorway, uncertain. Had his parents remembered to charm the door? The last time he had tried to sneak out, only a few weeks ago, he had been caught almost immediately by the loud whooping bray of the door.  
  
He giggled a little, remembering that his mother had called it her Remus alarm, then remembered what he was after, and frowned thoughtfully.  
  
Deciding that the joke was too good to risk the door, he headed over to the windows in the parlour. It was his Mum's room, pretty and full of things that seemed to break if he even looked at them. He never went in there if he could help it, so he thought it would be the best one to try. He dragged a chair, ever so carefully, over to the window, clambered up onto it, and tried the window.  
  
It opened smoothly and silently, just far enough so that he could slip out into the night. Grinning, he gave a triumphant little skip before running toward the back of the house.  
  
The grass was wet with dew, and it felt slippery and cool under his bare feet. He walked through the garden, staring up at the full moon. A gentle breeze rustled the grass around him, tickling his legs.  
  
Slugs forgotten, he wandered through the silver-lit garden, a slim boy, tall for his age, whose sandy hair gleamed in the moonlight. Shadows of rosebushes and lilacs, of the hawthorn tree, of climbing vines and down- arching branches danced on the moon-white grass, and he laughed softly, skipping along the paths.  
  
The trees on the edges of the forest beyond the garden swayed lightly in the breeze, their leaves silver-tipped. He watched them for a few moments, and remembered the slugs. His trick on his Mum and Dad at breakfast. The best trick so far, the one he'd spent days and days planning.  
  
Branches dipped, leaves dancing on the wind, and he forgot everything but the odd silvery light and the hypnotic sway of the trees as he headed out the garden gate and into the wild.  
  
There was nothing here he was not familiar with, and the trees were sparse enough to let moonlight through. It was only when he passed the fork in the path that the moonlight disappeared entirely, and he was left standing in near-total darkness beneath the trees.  
  
Still, he was brave and he knew to stay to the path. He turned to trace his way back to the garden, to home, unfazed by the growing wind, unafraid of the darkness.  
  
The wolf was on him like lightning.  
  
One moment he was standing on the path, facing toward home, telling himself to remember about the slugs. The next, he was down. Face pressing into dirt. Small stones cutting his legs. Lying crushed under warm heavy fur. Hearing deep growls. Feeling claws cutting into his back.  
  
It turned him over onto his back.  
  
He screamed.  
  
Yellow eyes gleamed harshly in the bare light. Gray-silver pelt matted with dirt brushed against his arms and legs. The wolf, massive, held him pinned. Bent to sniff. Moved off and away.  
  
He scrambled up. Started to run. Started to scream. Saw moonlight on path ahead. Heard the wolf chasing.  
  
Growling.  
  
Snarls like an approaching freight train.  
  
Thud of paws like thunder in his ears.  
  
Growling.  
  
Teeth snapping.  
  
Hot breath on his neck.  
  
Falling.  
  
Pinned again, breathing harshly, he stared up at the wolf. It stared back, unmoved. As if it knew that this was a game. As if it knew that it would win.  
  
He kicked as hard as he could.  
  
Wolf-howl behind him. Running for his life. Running toward home. Breath coming in gasps. Arms and legs pumping.  
  
Reaching for moonlight.  
  
Reaching the moonlight.  
  
Sweaty. Aching. Terrified. Relieved to see the garden. The house. The door.  
  
Grass, dew-wet under his feet.  
  
Slipping.  
  
Tackled by silently running wolf.  
  
Worse to see its eyes. Its glowing wild yellow eyes.  
  
Scream.  
  
Hot breath on his neck.  
  
Crunch of bone. Spurt of blood.  
  
Teeth in his shoulder.  
  
Tongue lapping at the wound.  
  
Scream.  
  
Scream again.  
  
Call from the house.  
  
Wolf moving back. Away.  
  
Scream again.  
  
Fading.  
  
World sliding into grey.  
  
His father's voice.  
  
Flash of light.  
  
Thump of something solid falling.  
  
His mother's cry.  
  
Floating.  
  
Grey sliding into black.  
  
Nothing._  
  


  


  
The werewolf that attacked me was destoyed. It wasn't the Ministry that did it, but my father. My father, who knew instantly that no ordinary wolf would have bitten, then stepped away. My father, who knew instantly that our lives had changed. Who knew the value of secrecy.  
  
I almost died—so they told me.  
  
I don't remember any of it. That first journey into darkness ended days later, after countless healing spells, after multiple Blood-Replenishing Potions and Pain-Reducing Potions had been administered. I woke to the frightened, exhausted faces of my parents.  
  
I woke to a changed world.  
  
A world where darkness was to become a constant companion.  
  
I did not have as much ability, then, to contain the darkness. I was too young, too frightened, too confused. I watched my parents suffer alongside me, knowing that I had caused it.  
  
Jokes lost their value. Pranks were something that belonged to other people.  
  
Normal people.  
  
Laughter was a foreign language to me, in those early years.  
  
Those dark years.  
  
The darkness began to grow inside me early.  
  
Perhaps, had I been older, I might have prevented it taking root.  
  
It grew until it nearly overwhelmed me.  
  
It nearly overwhelmed my parents as well, through me.  
  
How many people has it threatened to consume, and how many more will it endanger before the end?  
  
How can I fight a force that has grown inside me since I was a child?  
  
How can I win this battle, upon which so much depends?  
  
I am Persephone, searching for a way back to the light.  
  
I am Hades, who dwells in darkness.  
  
--Remus J. Lupin. June, 1996. 


	3. chapter 02: alone under the full moon

**THIRTEEN MOONS**  
**chapter 02: alone under the full moon**

* * *

"It is not good that the man should be alone."

_Genesis ii.__ 18._

* * *

Alone.**  
  
** Before I was bitten, my family lived in the country, far away from our nearest neighbors and further still from the nearest wizarding family. Before I was bitten, my father, my mother and I were isolated from the rest of the world, but I was never truly alone.  
  
I'll be the first to admit that I had few friends, fewer playmates. I never felt the lack. My parents were always there, always willing to put down whatever they were doing for a few minutes' play. Teaching me to read, teaching me simple spells, teaching me about the worlds we lived in, wizarding and Muggle.**  
**  
My mother would tell me about her life growing up in Muggle London while she baked or cleaned or worked in the garden. She had the ability to make me see buildings that had been ground into dust by the fury of the Blitz, to make me feel the rush of exhilaration that came from being able to use an extra sugar coupon, to make me understand, even at such a young age, that our lack of money was unimportant compared to what we had. We had enough food to eat. We had a roof over our heads. We had a nice house, we had health, we had safety, we had laughter.  
  
We had each other.  
  
My father, sitting near the hearth, pipe tucked in the corner of his mouth after a long day at work, would launch into stories of his school days at Hogwarts, of pranks he and his friends had played, of school shopping in Diagon Alley and visits to the Ministry of Magic and trips to see Quidditch matches. He would watch me trying to work the simple spells he taught me, and laugh at my mother's concern.  
  
'They're not going to put us in prison for a few minor spells, Annie,' he'd say, grinning up at her until her forehead smoothed out and she smiled back at him. 'Besides, as long as I'm here to make sure things don't get out of hand, there's no harm in it.' He'd wait until I'd managed whatever spell he'd been trying to teach me, and beam proudly no matter how mangled the results. Then he'd tell another story, while Mum and I settled onto the sofa to listen.   
  
We had each other.  
  
Before the attack, we had each other completely.  
  
I never understood what loneliness was before the attack. How could I have?   
  
How does a child born without sight understand what it is to be blind?  
  
The attack changed everything, so absolutely that it was only years later that I remembered what we had once had together, the three of us. After the attack, it was them, together, and myself, alone.  
  
The attack divided us as cleanly as a sharp knife separates butter. All it took was five minutes on a forest path to destroy the first four years of togetherness. We were divided cleanly, so cleanly that only years later did I realise the pain of it. It happened the moment I was bitten.  
  
I woke up one of three people in my little room under the eaves.  
  
I woke up alone.

* * *

_He felt all hot and sore and grumbly, and he wanted something to eat. He opened his eyes, blinking against too-bright light, and saw them sitting near the window. He couldn't see their faces. They didn't look like his Mum and Dad but like shadows against the sunlight. Shadows. Just the thought was enough to make him shivery and sick-feeling.  
  
He must have trembled or made some small noise. His mother was at his side in an instant, and the sight of her, familiar and well-loved, made the shivery feeling disappear.  
  
Then he saw her eyes, and it came back. Doubled. Redoubled.  
  
It never left him.  
  
She was afraid.  
  
Afraid for him?  
  
He stirred, turned his hot, achy head toward the white soft, coolness of her hand as he yawned.  
  
He felt her hand hesitate.  
  
Felt her hand pull back for a brief moment, until his yawn had ended and his mouth was closed.  
And he understood that she was not afraid _for_ him.  
  
She was afraid _of_ him.  
  
That quickly, the fever left him. That quickly, his headache redoubled.  
  
That quickly, he was alone.  
  
Throughout the next two weeks, his parents were with him constantly. Bringing him the same little treats. Telling him the same little stories, occasionally even making him laugh.   
  
He didn't find it easy to laugh anymore. He wasn't sure if it was his mother's fear or the werewolf's attack that had stolen his laughter. He just knew it was gone, like the blood he'd lost when he'd been bitten.  
  
He knew from his parents' faces that they sensed the change in him. That they were worried about his silence. Worried about the effort it took to make him laugh. He knew that they were afraid that he was 'sinking.' That he was 'withdrawing.' That he was 'depressed.'  
  
He knew what sinking was. Sinking was when you had swum too far past your depth, and you couldn't swim anymore, and you went under.  
  
He didn't know how to tell them that they didn't have to worry. He wasn't sinking. He wasn't going to go under.  
  
He was already there. Alone, and more than a little afraid.  
  
He'd heard them talking, when he was supposed to be in bed asleep. He knew that the full moon was coming, and that his mother was afraid. He'd heard them discussing it yesterday, from his vantage point on the staircase. They wouldn't talk about it in front of him; his mother was afraid of scaring him.  
  
He wasn't afraid, not really. He'd had time to think about it, since his Dad had told him what had happened on the forest path. He thought it would be pretty neat to be a wolf, especially if it was just for a night and he could be a boy again afterward. It sounded like one of the adventure stories his Mum had told him while baking bread in the kitchen.  
  
At least, he _hadn't_ been afraid. Not until he'd heard them talking.  
  
That was when he knew that becoming a wolf for a night was a dangerous thing. A terrible thing.  
  
A bad thing.  
  
That was when he began to be afraid._

* * *

"John, this simply won't do. We can't lock him up like an animal just because the moon will be full. It's inhumane."  
  
"Believe me, Annie, I wish there were some other way. He's my _son_. I don't want to see him locked up. But he won't be able to control himself--if he were four times his age, or ten times his age, he wouldn't be able to control the transformation. He's a werewolf, Annie. You saw the claws and the fangs and the fur when he was delirious. _That's_ what he'll be like. All it would take is the tiniest nip, Annie, and you'd become one, too."  
  
"Maybe that would be better. He wouldn't be alone." _His mother's voice was thick, as though she were fighting back tears._ "You've seen him, John. He's pulling away from us. He doesn't know what's happening, not really. He's just a little boy!"  
  
"I know, Annie. I know." _His father's voice, sadder than Remus had ever heard it before._ "If I thought it would help him, I'd find a way for us to join him. But it won't help, Annie. All it would do is make it impossible for us to stay together at all." _Remus heard his mother begin to say something then pause, and knew that his father was holding up a gentle hand._ "Annie. If all three of us are werewolves, all three of us are targets."  
  
"I don't care! I'll become a target gladly, if it means the three of us are together."  
  
"Annie." _Remus heard his father take a deep, shuddering breath, and was horror-struck to realise that his father was near tears._ "If we live together on the run, who will teach Remus to live as normal a life as possible? How will he go to school? How will he grow up without bitterness, without hate?"****

* * *

_Remus crept back up the stairs slowly, his stomach hurting dreadfully. He'd made his father cry. As he reached his room, he could hear his mother's soft sobs floating up through the heat register. He'd made his mother cry as well. He crawled into bed, tears in his eyes, and thought hard.  
  
There had to be something he could do to make things right again. He had ruined it all. He'd wanted to play a joke on them, so he'd broken the rules, and now his parents were all sad and angry and confused.  
  
He would find a way to fix it. He _had_ to find a way to fix it.  
  
He was determined, and he was clever--he had always been a clever child. He might have found a way to fix it, or at least have tried to make it better.  
  
No four-year old had ever been as determined as Remus Lupin when he wanted something.  
  
In the end, though, determination made no difference.  
  
He was only four, after all, and he was still suffering the effects of the first attack. He had no concept of time passing, not in the way that adults do.  
  
He didn't really understand that he had been unconscious for a week, in bed for nearly three more.  
  
He had no idea that he had overheard his parents talking on the eve of the full moon.__After a long evening spent in bed, considering the problem, Remus knew how to fix things. He'd spent most of the time he was supposed to be asleep remembering how things had gone wrong. Remembering sneaking out of the house, walking through the garden, walking into the forest. Remembered the attack, remembered running, falling, hurting. Screaming.  
  
It had given him nightmares. That had embarrassed him, badly enough that he hadn't called out for his Mum as he might have done a month earlier. He'd been afraid of causing more trouble. And part of him had been afraid that she would pull away again, as afraid of him as he was of the dreams.  
  
After thinking hard about things, Remus had decided that there was only one way to change things. Only one way to make his parents happy again. One way they could stop being afraid.  
  
He would leave.  
  
He was the problem. He was the werewolf. And he understood, or thought he did, from what he'd overheard the day before, that he was dangerous. His parents could be hurt. He might hurt them, without meaning to, because he was a werewolf.  
  
Werewolf.  
  
Yesterday morning, the idea had given him a little thrill. Turning into a wolf. Running around outside, under the moon. It had sounded pretty neat.  
  
This morning, the idea turned his stomach into a quivering mass of fear. Because werewolves hurt people. They turned people into werewolves just like them. Or they killed them. And when that happened, werewolves were hunted down and destroyed.  
  
No one would do that if werewolves weren't bad.  
  
If he wasn't bad.  
  
Still, he was clever enough to realise that he couldn't let his parents know about his plan. He was a smart little boy who already had years of experience playing tricks on his parents under his belt. He knew that he could pretend that things were the same as they had been yesterday. And that he could keep on pretending, at least until he   
  
_got up enough courage to_  
  
could leave. So he got dressed and walked slowly downstairs, and sat down at the table.  
  
"'Morning, Mum," he said, cheerfully.  
  
His mother looked a bit startled, and with good reason. It had been a month to the day since her son had sat down at the breakfast table and beamed at her.  
  
She beamed back and served him his breakfast._**********_  
  
_**

* * *

_Tired and strangely restless, strangely achy, he didn't protest as much as usual when his parents put him to bed earlier than usual. He was still sick, they told him, and he shouldn't yet be out of bed as much as he had been today. When his father shut the door behind him and locked it, Remus kept his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.  
  
The click of the lock warned him. He remembered his mother's words of the night before. _Locked up like an animal_. He was a smart boy, and he managed to make the connection fairly quickly.  
  
Once he did, he jumped out of bed and looked out the window. The sun was beginning to slide beneath the trees.  
  
If he was going to make things right, now was the time.  
  
Now, before the werewolf came.  
  
He could hear his parents downstairs in the kitchen, and knew his usual route of escape was out. But he had others, and after looking around his room for a long moment, he quietly unlocked the door and slipped out into the hallway. Closed it and locked it behind him, so that they wouldn't realise that he was gone.  
  
He hurried silently down the hallway and into his parents' bedroom, then out the open window on the far side of the house. Because the house was built into a hill, this side of the second story was only a few feet from the ground. Remus, already a veteran at sneaking out of the house, was well aware of the reason his bedroom was on the other side of the house, where the drop-off was far greater.  
  
He slid onto soft grass and made for the forest, running as fast as exhaustion and the strange achiness would allow. A look back told him that the kitchen curtains had been closed against the night, and relief flooded him. They wouldn't even notice he was gone until after the moon had risen.  
  
They were safe.  
  
He was deep in the forest, far past the point in the path where he had first seen the other werewolf, when the first pains hit. The odd achy feeling he'd had all day had been growing as he ran. The switch from low ache to sharp, rending pain caught him completely unawares, sending him sprawling facefirst on the moss-covered ground.  
  
He curled up against the pain, which was no longer just one pain but a thousand separate stabbing pains forcing tears from his eyes like penance. The dim greensilver light in the forest intensified until he had to squeeze his eyelids shut against the horrible glare. Even as the light began to hurt his eyes, a dozen new, sharper pains wrung helpless whimpers from him. Lying on his side on the forest floor, he felt as though every bone in his body was splintering into a hundred useless pieces.  
  
The pains came faster, until his world was a dancing, shimmering curtain of agony, his entire body convulsing with the shattering force of it. He felt as though his skin were rippling, as though he were swelling, as though he might explode with it. One last gut-wrenching pain had his eyes opening helplessly.  
  
He saw the fur, the claws, the tail, and understood the cause of the pain.   
  
Startled into a sob that sounded very much like a howl, he stared at himself. Fascination battled with horror and won a tenuous victory. The light, he noticed, had dimmed to a level that was bearable, and he looked around.  
  
The forest was bright in a way he'd never seen it before. Everything stood out in sharp relief, every crinkle of bark, every clump of moss, every blade of shade-stunted grass distinct from the rest.  
  
At the same time, the pain was gone, its absence loud like a thunderclap in his mind.  
  
He pushed himself to his feet--to all four feet--and swayed there a bit drunkenly.  
  
Felt the wolf take hold.   
  
Felt himself steadying.  
  
Caught the scent of something moving in the undergrowth far ahead. Moved off into the forest, gaining confidence in his new limbs with every step._**********_  
  
_**

* * *

_Instinct or exhaustion brought him back to the edge of the forest at moonset. He looked through night-sharp eyes across the distance and saw the house, lit up like a beacon against the ink-black night. Saw curtains moving in the kitchen window, saw tall shadows moving back and forth beyond the curtains.  
  
Too weary to approach, too weary to retreat, too much of the wolf to remember his plan, too much of the child to let go of the sight of home, he lay down beneath the trees, rested his head on his crossed front paws, and drifted off to sleep.  
  
That was where they found him as dawn broke across the sky, bruised and scratched and far too thin, the still-healing scar on his shoulder a livid, angry red.  
  
They carried him home without a word, washed him, dressed him, and put him to bed.  
  
And sat with him, so that he would not be alone when he woke.__  
_**********_  
_**

* * *

After that first transformation, I woke to find my parents on either side of me. One of them or the other was always there, from the moment I woke. They asked me why I'd left. I explained how I'd wanted them to be safe, and problem-free. They scolded me, but gently, for thinking that leaving them would make their lives better. They explained that they could never have been happy without me.

I started to understand that we were all new to this thing I was dealing with, that we all had to learn how to handle the difficulties. That they hadn't truly known what to expect any more than I had, and that they hadn't fully thought things out before the full moon forced us all to learn as we went.

We were together again, as we had been.

My mother's hand never again faltered, no matter the circumstances.

My father never again spoke of danger, at least not that I heard.

They were with me, the way they always had been.

But I was alone.

Alone but not alone—that idea was to become the moon revolving around me, controlling the tides of my life as the moon above controlled my disease. It did not matter whether I was surrounded by people; I was always alone.

Alone but not alone; no matter how much attention my parents gave me, no matter how long our talks, no matter how careful their preparations, there was the full moon to consider. The full moon and all it brought stood between us like some invisible wall, impossible to scale, taller with each passing month.

Alone but not alone; no matter how many friends I made at school, there was always the secret to be kept, always something I had to hide. There was always one more lie to be told, one more disappearance or illness I had to explain away. There was no connection, no bond that survived the obvious lies.

Alone but not alone even when my friends learned my secret, even when they ran beside me under the full moon. No matter how much they had sacrificed and struggled to find a way to keep me company, to keep me from being alone—and I was not oblivious to their battles, not in the slightest—the fact remained that they ran by choice. I ran because there was no other choice. My world was a desolate, faraway island they chose to visit. When they left, I could not follow.

Alone but not alone; on leaving school, we remained together, the best of friends. But my island grew smaller, seemed to move even further out to sea. They had jobs, friends I could not share, lives I could only see from a distance. Their horizons broadened. Mine shrank, and though I understood what was happening, though my parents had done their best to prepare me for it, I began to drift further away.

I might have drifted forever, alone and rudderless, if it hadn't been for Sirius. He was the only one who ever managed to scale the walls. The only one with whom I never felt alone. He made the darkness recede, if not completely then at least enough that I could see the sun. Feel its warmth in his touch, in the feel of his skin against mine, in what we shared.

Now he is gone, and the walls have grown high enough to block out the sun. Now my world is darkening with every passing hour.

I cannot see the sun, only the quicksilver moon, cruel and indifferent. The moon, slipping across dark sky like a scream that grows to an unbearable wail then fades to a whisper, disappearing only to grow again.

I don't know how to find the sun again.

I don't know how to make the darkness disappear.

I have to try.

There is still so much left to do.

And there is Harry, teetering on the edge of darkness. I've spent too much of my life in darkness to wish it on my worst enemy, much less on the son of my best friend, the godson of my other half. The son of my heart, the boy who from the day of his birth was the child I secretly wished for and knew I would never have.

I am not his father, nor his godfather. I suppose that the best I can be is a friend to him, and that's as it should be.

It's enough.

It's enough to make me try to find the light, in honour of those who are gone, in hope for those who have yet to truly fight.

It's enough to make me fear the darkness, because I don't want it to do to Harry what it did to me.

I have to try to help him.

But am I strong enough to succeed, or will I only drag him down with me, down into the darkness?

Can I win this fight?

Will the darkness end?


End file.
